


Hyperballad

by geektastic



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Gen, Oneshot, background tony/bruce, bruce is a creature of pure angst, trigger warning: suicidal thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-27
Updated: 2013-01-27
Packaged: 2017-11-27 01:17:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 447
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/656425
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/geektastic/pseuds/geektastic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Warnings for suicidal thoughts and utterly gratuitous use of metaphor. </p>
<p>"I go through all this / before you wake up / so I can feel happier / to be safe up here with you."<br/>- Bjork, Hyperballad</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hyperballad

**Author's Note:**

> Not songfic as such, but inspired by this song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26sP2WsA5cY (If you haven't seen the music video for it before, I would highly recommend following that url, it's one the ones Michel Gondry directed for her and it will make your life better.)

Bruce stood on the penthouse balcony. Stark tower wasn't the tallest building in Manhattan, but it was certainly up there. He had to brace himself gently on the railing to look down, or vertigo would send him swaying uneasily on his feet. 

He often stood here, watching the grey pre-dawn. Watching the first inklings of what would soon become that morning's gridlock moving like ghostly insects through the city-scape. In a couple of hours Tony would crawl out of bed, swearing about his hangover and and rattling around the back of liquor cabinet for something to cure it. But this cornered scrap of time was Bruce's: the silence barely punctured by distant sirens, the curious isolation of being so high above the street and its dirt and noise. Most mornings he used the time to meditate, but some days it was enough just to stand here and breathe. 

The steps up to Tony's landing pad were decorated with empty beer bottles from last night. You could tell which one's had been Bruce's by they fact that their labels hung off in strips, or were torn away at jagged angles. He picked one up. He rolled it back and forth between his hands, watching as the shape of his fingers was captured and warped in the green glass. Then he let it dangle by its ribbed lip between his forefinger and thumb, base of the bottle rotating slowly over the street below. Then he let it go. 

It fell perfectly straight. He tracked it with steady eyes for a moment, head angled over the railing with one finger holding his glasses in place, but lost sight of it sooner than he thought he would. He couldn't see where it hit the ground, but he imagined it. He imagined it hitting the middle of the wide pavement, glass exploding outwards. He imagined the dim crash it would make and green glints scattered across the concrete, each fragment throwing a little of the dawn light back into the sky. The image was soothing. Each of the little glass shards released from the tension of holding shape, lying incomplete and unremarkable, in random radiation from the point of impact. 

It belatedly occurred to Bruce that throwing a bottle of a building was quite a stupid thing to do – he could have easily hurt somebody. But the pavement was empty, there was another hour or so before it would wash over with a steady stream of Stark Industries employees trickling through the doors to fill up the floors below. He ran his fingers through his hair as if to push himself back into reality and started collecting bottles to take back inside.


End file.
